THERE are fine cities in the world—Manhattan, Ecbatana and
Hecatompylus—but this city of Troy is the most fabulous of them all.
Rome was seven hills of butcher’s meat, Athens an abstraction of marble,
in Alexandria the steam of kidney-puddings revolted the cœnobites,
darkness and size render London inappreciable, Paris is full of
sparrows, the snow lies gritty on Berlin, Moscow has no verisimilitude,
all the East is peopled by masks and apes and larvæ. But this city of
Troy is most of all real and fabulous with its charnel beauty.
“Is not Helen the end of our search—paradisal little World, symbol and
epitome of the Great? Dawn sleeps in the transparent shadow of roses
within her ear. The stainless candour of infinity—far-off peaks in
summer and the Milky Way—has taken marvellous form in her. The Little
World has its meteors, too, comets and shadowy clouds of hair, stars at
whose glance men go planet-struck. Meteors—yes, and history it has. The
past is still alive in the fragrance of her hair, and her young body
breathes forth memories as old as the beginning of life—Eros first of
gods. In her is the goal. I rest here with Helen.”
“Fool,” I said, “quote your Faustus. I go further.”
V
FURTHER—but a hundred Liliputian tethers prevent me, the white nerves
which tie soul to skin. And the whole air is aching with epidermical
magnetism.
Further, further. But Troy is the birthplace of my homesickness. Troy is
more than a patriotism, for it is built of my very flesh; the
remembrance of it is a fire that sticks and tears when I would pull it
off.
But further. One last look at Troilus where he stands by the western
gate, staring over the plain. Further. When I have learnt the truth, I
will return and build a new palace with domes less ominously like
breasts, and there I will invent a safer Helen and a less paradoxical
Cressid, and my harem will be a library for enlightenment.